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In this podcast I’ll be exploring Knowledge:
- I’ll explain why having knowledge is not as empowering as you might think
- I’ll talk about two types of knowledge that are truly empowering
- Finally I’ll share how to best apply accumulated knowledge giving you phenomenal powers to live an awesome life
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Today a lot of the human experience is all about watching TV, YouTube videos, and sharing information through social media websites. Which is great! I mean it’s awesome that we can learn so many new things about so many different topics and connect to so many different people through the power of the Internet.
But, how much of this knowledge and of these online relationships are actually relevant to your life and how much of that relevant information have you actually applied and done yourself? Think about what you’ve learned in just the past 7 days. How much of that information was relevant to you and how much of it have you tried for yourself? Probably not a whole lot… and that goes for me too.
The old saying ‘knowledge is power’ doesn’t hold true. Because what you know could have absolutely no use for you in your current life situation and more importantly even though you know a lot of stuff if you don’t apply that knowledge and get it out of your head and into the real world then there’s really no power in knowing that stuff.
“Knowledge that isn’t relevant and applied is weak.”
There are two types of knowledge that are relevant though and easy to implement in your life empowering you to become a better version of yourself.
First knowledge type is a knowing. Knowing is all about self-knowledge. It’s about an innate, instinctual, intuitive know-ing that you feel emotionally deep down to your core and because it comes from within rather than without this knowing is all about you. With this type of knowledge you will know what you want and don’t want, what you like and don’t like, who you want to hang out with or not, what career or job you’d like to have, what foods work for you and don’t work for you.
There’s a musical lyric ‘to know you is to love you’ and what I’m saying here is:
“To know thyself, is to love thyself.”
With a knowing you will better understand what it is you love and what it is you don’t love. This helps guide you to filter out the crap information and to choose better info to download into your bodymind. By knowing what’s worth learning and what isn’t you ensure that what you do know is relevant to you and your life.
The second knowledge type is about being knowledgeable. Being knowledge-able. Where you are able to put your knowledge into being. Meaning applying the knowledge you’ve learned and taking action on that knowledge. So turning a learned thought and idea (which is external energy downloaded from the universe) and integrating this with your knowing of self (which is internally sourced energy from within your own bodymind) and making it a reality in the physical world (which is a combination of both external and internal energies). So being knowledgeable is all about taking action on what you’ve learned to create a new experience for yourself and others.
You could read, watch, and listen for an eternity about how to drive a car, ride a bike, or swim, but you still wouldn’t be able to do any of it until you actually get into a car, on a bike, or in the water and apply what you’ve learnt.
It’s only when you apply knowledge by being in action, by being knowledgeable and using your knowing of self that you actually get to experience life and find out your own truth about something you’ve read, seen, or heard about. So knowledge isn’t power, but potential power and applied knowledge is truly where you have the power.
As I said before in order to make sure you’re accumulating relevant knowledge you must have a knowing of your self and one of the best ways of doing this is through meditation. There’s nothing like focusing your mind on one thing for 20 minutes to 2 hours to get you intimately connected to who you really are on the inside because your mind wants to do everything else but focus so you’re constantly having to bring yourself to centre. But along the way you get insights as to what thoughts are clogging up your body and using up a lot of your thinking energy. It’s these thoughts you want to come back to after meditation to figure out why they kept coming up during your meditation practise.
The one tip I have for putting a lot of your accumulated knowledge into action is to be mindful during the learning process or in other words pay real attention while you’re learning. What I mean is when you’re not completely focused on what you’re learning or on what’s happening right in front of you then you only pickup fragments and get a partial download of what you see and hear into your consciousness.
You see there’s a difference between seeing and watching, hearing and listening, trying and doing.
For example, you could see someone cook scrambled eggs a million times, but unless you actually focus and look for the details and watch you won’t be getting the full download of what they’re doing. You could hear them talking about temperatures and egg yolks and timings, but unless you actually focus and clear the chatter in your head and listen you won’t be getting the full download of what they’re actually saying. You could try in your mind and visualise the steps, but unless you actually get up of the couch and into the kitchen and do and act and cook you won’t be getting the full experience of cooking scrambled eggs.
But then of course even if you did cook a beautiful plate of scrambled eggs, what if you got gas or stomach cramps after eating them. This would be part of knowing, knowing your self and understanding that scrambled eggs are not relevant to you at this time and that this particular knowledge while it doesn’t serve you personally it may still help someone else.
So yes of course you want to be learning and growing and enhancing your skills throughout your lifetime, but you want to make sure the information you learn and download into your consciousness, into your bodymind fits you and your lifestyle and you most definitely have to make sure you take action on what you’ve learnt, because the power of knowledge is yours only when you’re able to put that knowledge into being.
Bonus tip, pick up the awesome book The First 20 Hours by Josh Kaufman. It teaches you how to learn anything easily and quickly. I read this and picked up tips on how to break down complex ideas, on how to save on my learning time, and how to keep moving forward by creating an optimal learning environment.
So remember to keep learning, to keep learning about yourself, and to keep moving forward by being in action.
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